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I’d see you dead first . He smiled, and said, “She is only ten years old, Cris—Titus. I am not looking yet. Besides, I am sure you can find yourself a wife here in Rome, if you decide you want one. How is business?”
    Crispus told him, at length, about his interest in a new shipping syndicate and some building work in Rome. Hermogenes listened attentively, occasionally making a mental note of something that might be useful. At last his host exhausted the subject and looked at his wine cup. It was empty, and he snapped his fingers to fetch the cupbearer.
    â€œWhat about you?” he asked, as Hyakinthos refilled it. “In your letter you said that you had some important business in Rome, but you didn’t say what it was.”
    Hermogenes refused a top-up of his own cup. Important business . He was uncomfortably aware that the powerful impulses which had driven him to leave his home and family and come to Rome had little to do with business. Oh, there was money at stake as well, but it wasn’t what mattered to him. He did not want to admit to Titus Fiducius that what he was really hoping to find in Rome was that elusive and impractical thing: justice . Any businessman would find that suspect and disturbing. Justice could well end up being far more expensive than even the worst-judged commercial transaction.
    â€œI am here like a bailiff, to collect a debt which is overdue,” he declared, smiling as though it didn’t matter to him. “I would welcome any advice you have to give me on how I should go about it.”
    Crispus laughed. “Whose furniture are you looking to seize?”
    â€œI will not ‘seize’ anything. The debtor is a wealthy and powerful man. What I want advice on is how to approach him tactfully.”
    â€œWho is it?”
    â€œLucius Tarius Rufus.” In Alexandria he had once written that name out on a wax tablet, then scored it over with the stylus so deeply that he had taken all the wax off and gouged the wood beneath. He was pleased that he could utter it now with such casual calm.
    Crispus sat up straight and stared in amazement. “The general? Jupiter! He’s consul !”
    â€œIs he?” Hermogenes asked in surprise. “Surely, the consuls this year are”—he recalled the date on his most recent Roman business contract. It was agreed during the consulship of —“Domitius Ahenobarbus and Cornelius Scipio?”
    â€œTarius Rufus replaced Scipio at the beginning of the month,” Crispus told him. “It happens a lot these days. The nobles expect the consulship by right of birth; the new men think they’ve earned it, and they end up having to share. Scipio’s blue blood undoubtedly boiled at having to step down for a farmboy from Picenum, but step down he did. Rufus is a friend of the emperor, and Augustus trusted him to command the army of the Danube. You don’t argue with a man like that.” He got to his feet, carried his cup to the sideboard, then turned around still clutching it. “I can see why you’re eager to be tactful. He owes you money? I never knew he had any business in Egypt.”
    Hermogenes swirled the wine round his half-empty cup. “He doesn’t, as far as I am aware. However, twelve years ago he was proconsul of Cyprus—an island which, as you know, has always had the closest ties with Egypt, since it used to belong to the kings. My father’s sister married a prominent businessman there, a man by the name of Nikomachos—he of the shipping syndicate, yes! Rufus borrowed half a million sestertii from him at five percent per annum.”
    â€œHe signed a contract?”
    Hermogenes nodded. “Signed, sealed, and witnessed. In fact, during the first five years after he borrowed it he did make regular repayments—all the annual interest, and a hundred thousand of the principal. Then, however, the payments ceased. Rufus was in Illyria at